Turkey liver: Physicochemical characteristics and functional properties of protein fractions

Turkey liver is an important edible meat by-product. However, it is generally unprocessed, underutilized and low-priced compared to mammalian livers. The present investigation was conducted to provide information on physicochemical composition and functional characteristics of turkey liver. Proximate composition (%) was: moisture (72.3 ± 1.2), protein (21.9 ± 0.6), fat (2.9 ± 1.6), carbohydrate (1.4 ± 0.7), and total ash (1.5 ± 0.1). Cholesterol, glycogen and total heme pigments (g/kg) in the turkey liver were 2.05 ± 0.06, 5.36 ± 0.01 and 2.3 ± 0.08, respectively. Contents in saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids (%) were 42.5, 14.6 and 32.6 respectively. Interestingly, turkey liver fat also contains 5% of camphor (oxygenated monoterpene). Mineral concentrations (mg/kg) in liver were: Na (817 ± 14), K (1390 ± 90), Ca (31.4 ± 0.3), Mg (23 ± 0.4), Fe (161 ± 5), Zn (40 ± 2) and Cu (34 ± 2). Liver proteins extracted at 5 or 10 g/l NaCl showed the highest foaming capacity (P < 0.05). Addition of xanthan (1-3 g/l) to liver proteins improved both foam formation and its stability (P < 0.05). Turkey liver also showed interesting emulsifying properties. The emulsion stability of liver proteins was more pronounced at high NaCl concentration (20 g/l). The highest emulsion stability was obtained at acidic or basic pH values (P < 0.05) and decreased at pH 6.     

Structural,dielectric, piezoelectric,ferroelectric and electro-caloric properties of Ba1−xCaxTi0.975(Nb0.5Yb0.5)0.025O3 lead-free ceramics

Polycrystalline samples of Ba_1?xCa_xTi_0.975(Nb_0.5Yb_0.5)_0.025O₃ (where x = 0.15, 0.2 and 0.3, abbreviated as BCTYN) were prepared by the conventional solid state reaction method. The effect of calcium (Ca) substitution in BaTi_0.975(Nb_0.5Yb_0.5)_0.025O₃ (abbreviated as BTYN25) on the structural, dielectric, piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties and electro-caloric effects (ECE) was investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results at room temperature showed that the BCTYN samples in the composition x < 0.3 exhibited a pure tetragonal perovskite structure. Dielectric measurements showed a classical ferroelectric behavior for all samples. With the increase of the Ca content, the Curie temperature (T_C) was still maintained with a small shift towards low temperature. The evolution of the Raman spectra was studied as a function of compositions and temperatures. The Raman bands confirmed the structure and the phase transition of the BCTYN ceramics. By adding Ca, the piezoelectric properties and the remanent polarization (P_r) are relatively maintained for the compositions x = 0.15 and x = 0.2. A piezoelectric coefficient of d₃₃ = 130 pC/N and a planar electromechanical coupling factor of k_p = 28% were obtained for these compositions. Two different methods were used to calculate the electro-caloric coefficients of the BCTYN ceramics. The incorporation of Ca was found to enhance the electro-caloric strength (ξ = ΔT/ΔE) within a broad temperature range with a best value of ξ = 0.2?Kmm/kV for x = 0.2.     

Anomalous behavior detection-based approach for authenticating smart home system users

International Journal of Information Security - This paper presents Duenna, an authentication framework for smart home systems (SHSs). When using controlling apps (e.g., a smartphone app), Duenna...     

Enrichment of linear hexahedral finite elements using rotations of a virtual space fiber

The present paper deals with the enrichment of 3D low‐order finite elements. The used concept is based on the idea that a 3D virtual fiber, after a spatial rotation, introduces an enhancement of the strain field tensor approximation. A consistent stiffness matrix is obtained, allowing a better approximation of the actual solution compared with that resulting from low‐order finite elements. Implemented for two eight‐node hexahedral elements, the performance of the space fiber rotation concept is assessed by running some classical beam, plate, and shell benchmarks, and the obtained results are compared especially with those given by linear eight‐node and quadratic 20‐node hexahedral elements. In particular, it is shown that the developed elements accuracy is significantly superior to that of the classical eight‐node hexahedral element and close to that of the classical 20‐node hexahedral element. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Friedreich''s ataxia with isolated vitamin E deficiency: a neuropathological study of a Tunisian patient

PURPOSE: Percutaneous radiofrequency interstitial thermal ablation is a new method in local tumour therapy. The aim of this study was to define the relations between the variable parameters and local efficacy in vitro and to evaluate optimal parameter combinations for this system. Furthermore, we studied the feasibility of increasing the volume of destroyed tissue using perfusion electrodes. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Thermal lesions were produced with radiofrequency in ex vivo pig livers. In separate experiments the parameters wattage (5-30 watts), exposure time (1-15 minutes) and tip exposure were varied. The resulting areas of tissue necrosis coagulation were measured; in 30 of 90 cases the macroscopic findings were compared to the histological findings. RESULTS: Lesion size correlated with tip exposure, wattage and procedure duration up to 10 minutes. For a tip exposure of 2 cm (3 cm) the maximal lesion volume was 18.8 cm3 (33.2 cm3) at a wattage of 20 watts (30 watts) and a procedure duration of 10 minutes. The maximal cross- (length-) diameter of these lesions was 3 cm (4 cm) for 2 cm tip exposure and 3.6 cm (4.9 cm) for 3 cm tip exposure. CONCLUSION: The parameters wattage, procedure duration and tip exposure affect the size of lesions created with radiofrequency under ex vivo conditions. Perfusion electrodes make it possible to produce larger lesions than described for non-perfused electrodes. The ablation of hepatic neoplasms up to a size of 3 cm seems to be possible with a single electrode.     

An efficient microcalcifications detection based on dual spatial/spectral processing

Microcalcifications are tiny deposits of calcium located in breast tissue. They appeared as very small highlighted regions in comparison with their surrounding tissue. Spatial non linear enhancement can be applied for microcalcification detection. However, efficiency of a such approach depends on breast density: in case of extreme breast density, the contrast between microcalcification’s details and their surrounding tissue is attenuated leading to a limitation of spatially based approaches. In that case, frequency analysis such as wavelet based analysis can be more relevant for dissociating microcalcifications. The main goal of Computer Aided Detection systems (CAD) is to detect breast cancer at an early stage for all breast density classes by using entropies to enhance and then detect microcalcification details. Accordingly, we combine our approach a spatial Automatic Non Linear Stretching (ANLS) and Shannon Entropy based Wavelet Coefficient Thresholding (SE_WCT). Validation of the proposed approach is done on the Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) database. The evaluation of the contrast is based on the Second-Derivative-Like measure of enhancement(SDME). Accordingly, it yields to a mean SDME of 78.8dB on the whole database. The performance metric for evaluating our proposed CAD is the Receiver Operating Characteristic(ROC) curve and the free-response ROC (FROC). An area under the ROC curve A _z = 0.92 is obtained as well as 97.14 % of True Positives (TP) with 0,48 False positives per image (FP).     

Prediction of high-strength concrete: high-order response surface methodology modeling approach

In the concrete industry, compressive strength is the most essential mechanical property. Therefore, insufficient compressive strength may lead to dangerous failure and, thus, becomes very difficult to repair. Consequently, early, and precise prediction of concrete strength is a major issue facing researchers and concrete designers. In this study, high-order response surface methodology (HORSM) is used to develop a prediction model to accurately predict the compressive strength of high-strength concrete (HSC). Different polynomial degrees order ranging from 2 to 5 is used in this model. The HORSM, with five-order polynomial degree, model outperforms several artificial intelligence (AI) modeling approaches which are carried out widely in the prediction of HSC compression strength. Besides, support vector machine (SVM) model was developed in this study and compared with the HORSM. The HORSM models outperformed the SVM models according to different statistical measures. Additionally, HORSM models managed to perfectly predict the HSC compressive strength in less than one second to accomplish the learning processes. While, other AI models including SVM much longer time. Lastly, the use of HORSM for the first time in the concrete technology field provided much accurate prediction results and it has great potential in the field of concrete technology.

     

An efficient low-cost FPGA implementation of a configurable motion estimation for H.264 video coding

Despite the diversity of video compression standard, the motion estimation still remains a key process which is used in most of them. Moreover, the required coding performances (bit-rate, PSNR, image spatial resolution,etc.) depend obviously of the application, the environment and the network communication. The motion estimation can therefore be adapted to fit with these performances. Meanwhile, the real time encoding is required in many applications. To reach this goal, we propose in this paper a flexible hardware implementation of the motion estimator which enables the integer motion search algorithms to be modified and the fractional search as well as variable block size to be selected and adjusted. Hence, this novel architecture, especially designed for FPGA targets, proposes high-speed processing for a configuration which supports the variable size blocks and quarter-pel refinement, as described in H.264. The proposed low-cost architecture based on Virtex 6 FPGA can process integer motion estimation on 1080 HD video streams, respectively, at 13 fps using full search strategy (108k Macroblocks/s) and up to 223 fps using diamond search (1.8M Macroblocks/s). Moreover subpel refinement in quarter-pel mode is performed at 232k Macroblocks/s.